This is National Reading Month (um, gee, isn’t that every month? No? Okay, then.). 😉 In honor of that, Amazon has discounted these books (for today)…and there are definitely some good ones on the list!

The Alchemist

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

American Gods

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Tales of the City

The Natural

The Poisonwood Bible

The Complete Stories (Flannery O’Connor)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Kane and Abel

The Good Earth

Old Yeller

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

Cryptonomicon

Miss Marple, the Complete Short Stories

When Beauty Tamed the Beast

[Ray] Bradbury Stories

Native Son

Sophie’s World

Sarah, Plain and Tall

You know how you say you are going to wait until those really great, well-known books go on sale? That’s now. 😉

As a reminder, you can buy these as a gift and delay the delivery until the appropriate occasion. For example, do you know a kid who would enjoy Sarah, Plain and Tall? You can order it now and pick a delivery date in December…

One of my regular readers, Lady Galaxy, suggested I might buy a couple to add to our Guest Bookshelf (see On our guest Kindle for a listing of the books we have on our Guest Kindle). A few people, I think wisely, suggested the list could use some more short story anthologies or collections.

However, I’m still seeing a lot of confusion, even among very sophisticated users, about how Cloud Collections work now.

I have to say, this does show that Amazon could explain these things better. I like that they have the Kindle Forum Pros (I’m one of those…we volunteer our time to help people), but their Help Pages could be more scenario based, in my opinion. They don’t tend to say, “You want to do this…here’s how”). They will tell you steps to do, but not tell you why you would do them.

I’m going to share something I posted elsewhere…this is based on our KPW1 (Kindle Paperwhite 1st generation): I think it’s the same on the KPW2.

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There are really three key things:

1. You can set a Collection so that it either appears in Collections view only, or in all views [note: you do this by selecting “Collections” in the menu to your right of where it says, ,”On Device”]

2. There is a menu for the filter (what will be displayed on your home screen). You can choose: All Items; Books; Periodicals; Docs; Collections; or Active Content [note: that’s the same menu as above]

3. There is another menu, similar to what we had before for sorting (the order in which the items you have chosen to display in the second step will show). You can use: Recent; Title; Author; or Collection [that’s the last menu on that row, to your right from the menu above]

Here’s my own example:

I created a Collection called “Guest Bookshelf” (this Kindle is one we use for guests). I can add books to it from the Paperwhite or from my Kindle Fire HDX (I find the latter easier).

That is the only Collection which is starred (“Show in All Views”) on this device.

I have it set to show “All Items” in the filter. It shows that Collection, plus active content, the Vocabulary Builder, a blog…just a few things that I have on it.

I have it sorted by “Collection”, meaning that the books in the Guest Bookshelf show inside that Collection (which appears at the top of the homepage) and not outside it.

That’s exactly what I want. 🙂

I think for most people, the set up is:

Switch the filter to Collections, and star the Collections you would like to show.

Switch the filter to All Items.

Switch the sort to Collection.

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Now, I do understand that some people want more functionality. Right now, the count of items in a Collection doesn’t change if you are on the Cloud tab or the Device tab. In other words, if you have a Romance Cloud Collection, you can’t tell how many of those books are actually on this device without opening the Collection. Even then, it doesn’t show a count…they just look different (books not on the device are faded).

is offering a bundle of 100 of their Comixology Submit titles…for $10!

That offer is only good through Sunday (March 10). This is a savings of 97%, and will give you some good indie (independently published) comics. Think of it like Kindle Direct Publishing for comic books.

You can read this through the free app you can get for your Kindle Fire (see above), and read it other places (including Android devices, iPads and iPhones, and Windows 8).

Update: Orphan Black on Prime

I meant to mention this one (and gee, this has become a really multimedia post! I started with books, I’ve done comics, and now video). Amazon Prime has recently added

It’s a science fiction series from last year where there was a lot of mainstream push that the lead actor should have been nominated for an Emmy…you don’t usually see that.

The performance by Tatiana Maslany is extraordinary. I want to leave you the discovery of what is happening, but I would guess you’ll be impressed. There are other good things to the series as well…might make a good binge watch (ten episodes). With Prime, you can watch them at no additional cost.

A content advisory: this ran on BBC America (and Space in Canada), and they don’t have the same restrictions that you might expect from a USA network show. There are sexual situations and nudity.

Nominate a child to be given a free Kindle at Give a Kid a Kindle. You can also now recommend a child to be the recipient.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help! By the way, it’s been interesting lately to see Amazon remind me to “start at AmazonSmile” if I check a link on the original Amazon site. I do buy from AmazonSmile, but I have a lot of stored links I use to check for things.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

8 Responses to “Round up #243: 100 comics for $10, understanding the new Cloud Collections”

I like the new implementation of Cloud Collections, and the fact that it is now available on my PW1.

I switch reading devices quite a bit so it really helps to ‘organize once, read many’. On my PW1, I have one ‘starred’ collection for books I’m currently reading. On my FireHD2 I have added that same collection to the Home screen, so it is easy to find and open. And on iOS and Android I have Collections view set as default. I can edit the collection on any device as I finish reading a book and add something else.

The second most collection is one that has all of my ‘to be read’ books. I used to keep track of this by downloading to the Kindle that was my ‘primary’ device and there they would sit until I read them, at which point I’d remove them. Now when I get a new book, I add it immediately to this collection. I don’t have to download it to any device until I’m ready to read it, and so I can keep fewer things on a given device, and can browse the TBR books on any device.

So far I prefer to stay in Collections view on my PW1 (as opposed to Collection Sort, which shows starred collections as well as everything that’s not in the starred collections). I find it less distracting than ‘My Items’. Collections identify my specific items of interest so by definition almost everything else is a lesser priority.

Certainly, there can be more than one configuration for different use cases. 🙂

Many people have lots of Collections they aren’t going use at all on that particular device.

For example, I have ten Cloud Collections. Only two of them have anything to do with the Guest Kindle (the aforementioned Guest Bookshelf, and one that says, “GUEST …PLEASE READ”. That one has a personal doc in it with instructions…and I might put a guide to the books there, as Elizabeth suggested).

The others have to do with different devices, for the most part.

However, the weird part is that neither my Significant Other nor I read on that Guest Kindle. 🙂

If all of your Collections affect you on that Kindle, then showing them all makes sense. My sense from what I’m hearing on the forums is that isn’t always the case: there are often Collections which really are device specific.

I am having problems trying to filter my collections so they do not all show up on my home page. I am simply not seeing the menu options you describe. Could it be I don’t have the latest update on my PW1? My firmware version is Kindle 5.4.2.1.

Add’l info: I verified my PW1 has not been updated. So i followed the instructions to manually update … Download the file on my laptop … Connect the kindle … Monitor the transfer, then eject and disconnect the kindle … Then, on the kindle, go into setting, menu, update your kindle. I did this twice but each time, the option to update your kindle was greyed out, indicating the transfer was not successful. Yet each time, before disconnecting, i verified the file was in the kindle and not in a folder.

I was going to let you know it wasn’t updated, but you beat me to it. 🙂

First, try restarting the Kindle to see if that changes the option.

Home – Menu – Settings – Menu – Restart

If it doesn’t, and I know this is going to sound strange, did you drag and drop the update file to the Kindle, or copy and paste? I ran into an issue once where that mattered…I think dragging and dropping is the right method.

Also, you did get the update file for the right model of Paperwhite, right?

Last comment then I may have to just give up. Twice again, I verified that I downloaded the right file. Verified the file was in the Kindle drive, nit in a folder. It was. But as soon as I eject the kindle, the file is gone and the kindle Paperwhite 1st generation will not upgrade.